If you want to learn Excel, this lesson covers ten important things that we think you need to know if you are going to use Excel effectively. Even if you've been using Excel for a while, check this lesson out to make sure you have the basics covered.
Learn Microsoft Excel
If you want to learn Microsoft Excel, you're in the right place. There is a lot to learn about Microsoft Excel, and not everything is in the manual. We've got a range of free online lessons on how to get the best out of Excel, starting from the basics right up to advanced subjects. We'll help you to do your job better - with the right Excel skills you could even get a raise or a better job! If you don't see what you want to learn, why not get in touch and suggest a lesson we should write.
Excel's Pivot Table feature is an incredibly powerful tool that makes it easy to tabulate and summarise data in your spreadsheets, particularly if your data changes a lot. This lesson will show you how to create a simple pivot table in Excel to summarize a set of daily sales data for a team of several sales people.
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XLOOKUP is a new function for Excel that will replace VLOOKUP for most Excel users. In this lesson, we look at how XLOOKUP works and provide some practical examples of how to use it. In one function, XLOOKUP provides the same features that VLOOKUP and HLOOKUP offer separately, and is more powerful and easier to use. XLOOKUP also removes the need to use the INDEX/MATCH combination that allows you to work around some of VLOOKUP's shortcomings.
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There are a variety of ways to add up the numbers found in two or more cells in Excel. This lesson shows you how to use the SUM function to add up cells, rows and columns of cells in Excel.
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This lesson shows you how to write formulas using INDEX and MATCH to let you perform lookups that VLOOKUP can't, and which run much faster on large lookup tables than VLOOKUP. This lesson explains how INDEX and MATCH work on their own, and then shows you how to write an INDEX MATCH formula that can look left as well as right, and performs much faster than VLOOKUP on large tables.
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It can sometimes be useful to know the address of a cell in a worksheet, so you can use that address in a formula. In this lesson, we'll look at how to use the ADDRESS function to find out the address of a cell. We'll then use the ADDRESS function in an example to demonstrate how useful it can be.
Excel is a powerful tool for manipulating large amounts of data. Make sure you know the rules Excel uses when setting up a data spreadsheet.
Sometimes you'll find yourself working with dates in an Excel spreadsheet that have been pasted or imported into Excel from another datasource. When that happens, Excel can treat those dates as text - in other words, they look like dates but don't behave like dates. For example you can't sort by date properly. This lesson looks at several ways you can convert a date which Excel is treating as text into a proper date value in Excel.
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The Pivot Table Report Filter adds another dimension to your pivot tables - literally. Rather than all of your data being presented in a flat table, the Report Filter lets you create a pivot table report and then change the data being presented using one or more Report Filters.
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In this lesson, we look at a specific example where you have a table of sales data, and you need to find out the name of the person who had the highest sales for the month. It's one of those things that seems like it should be easy until you actually try to do it. The solutions we present here are not the only way of achieving this, but the do have the advantage of solving the problem with a single formula. The methods here could also be used for a variety of other applications as well.
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VLOOKUP allows you to look for a specified value in a column of data inside a table, and then fetch a value from another column in the same row. An example might be where you need to find the sales for a specific salesperson from within a monthly sales report. In this lesson you'll learn how to use VLOOKUP in your spreadsheets by walking you through several simple examples. The lesson will also highlight some shortcomings of VLOOKUP, plus a solution to those shortcomings.
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When you are working with a large spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel, it's easy to find yourself scrolling down or across and losing track of where you are. This lesson explains how to freeze rows and columns (officially known as "Freeze Panes") in Excel 2010 for Windows and Excel 2011 for Mac.
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This lesson explains how to use Excel's logical operators and logical functions (AND, OR, NOT). These boolean operators can be used in a number of ways, either on their own, or to complement other Excel functions. In many cases, you can even use one of these functions instead of a more complicated function. For example, it is often easy to rewrite an IF statement using either AND or OR. This lesson includes examples of how to do this.
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If you have a column of numbers and you want to calculate a running total of the numbers alongside, you can use the SUM() formula combined with a clever use of absolute and relative references.
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If you have a spreadsheet with time values that have been added to the spreadsheet as text values, you need the TIMEVALUE function. This will allow you to convert the text values into valid time values. A common scenario where this might be useful is when you've been provided data to import into Excel, and the times in the imported data are not recognised by Excel as valid times.
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Excel Formulas
Do you need help with an Excel formula or function? We have lessons on a range of different Excel functions, and the list is growing all the time.
Click here to see the full list of Excel Formulas and Functions